


It Will Be Such a Long Way Home

by Hecate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, F/M, Fix-It, Pining, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Tony Stark, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Sokovia Accords, Team as Family, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 15:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14312184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: It's not Steve who gets Wanda out of the Raft. It's Tony.





	It Will Be Such a Long Way Home

When Tony comes back from Siberia, he goes back to the Raft, too. “Did you know?” he asks Sam, and he thinks that his voice isn't quite his own, thinks he himself isn't quite there, distant and floating around in his own head.

Sam looks at him.

Tony steps away. “Thought so,” he says, and he walks and walks and yet he is hardly moving, is still within the reach of Sam's voice when he calls for Tony.

“The others don't,” Sam says, and it's shards of relief knowing this, knowing that they fought the Accords but they didn't betray him like this, didn't betray him like Rogers did.

“Thank you,” Tony says, and he doubts that Sam understands what his gratitude is for. He was always one of Roger's, after all.

Still, Sam nods before he speaks again, his voice fraught with tension and worry. “I think they're hurting Wanda.”

Tony turns to him.

“Ross or whoever is control of this place. I think they're hurting her.”

Tony thinks of Wanda in her cell, broken and trapped under the power-dampening restraints, remembers how much he had despised Ross in that moment, how much he had wanted to enter her cell and rip the restraints off her. But he hadn't, he had been too busy with Rogers and Barnes.

“I'll check on her,” he says now, and he doesn't think of her under a bed, staring at a bomb with his name on it.

Sam looks grateful, and it's painful, the way the joke is on every single one of them now, how someone he drank with, laughed with, now is trapped in a prison cell, and Tony.... Tony is on the outside and yet feels the walls closing in.

He turns away. He has to find Wanda.

She is a ghost of herself in a cell, eyes blank, body rigid, and Tony wants to go to her, wants to pick her up and carry her out of the cell and back into the world. It's what Rogers would do, he knows this, but then Rogers failed to understand that carrying Wanda out of her cell wouldn't mean saving her. Not in a world that is intent on learning all the different ways to hate them, to fear them.

Tony walks away instead, makes his way home back to his money and connections. He calls his lawyers, the team already working on the Accords and all the changes Tony wants, Tony _needs_ , and he calls Pepper, and he calls in favours.

And then, after days and days of working and begging and hoping and spinning, he leaves to bring Wanda home.

Wanda doesn't react when he enters her cell, her face terrifyingly blank. Tony stops, waits. Still, she doesn't move.

"Okay," he says to himself, stepping closer. "Okay."

He kneels in front of her, smiling carefully. "Hey, Wanda. I'm here to get you out. Can you get up for me?"

She blinks, her eyes slowly focusing on him, and Tony attempts another smile. Instead, he ends up with a grimace. And Wanda doesn't answer, stays silent, and Tony wants to hurt Ross for this, wants to hurt whoever developed the restraints Wanda is wearing, the restraints he can't get off her, not yet, not in the Raft with Ross watching and regulations trapping Tony as much as her.

"I'm gonna carry you, okay?" he asks. Again, he doesn't get an answer.

He touches her carefully, thinking of all the ways she probably hates him, for her parents, for Ultron, for Pietro. And for this, for this very moment, and he never wanted her to find out how it feels to be true prisoner, to find out how the walls around you feel when it's not a friend's house but a cell, a cave, and they take away your defences. So he is careful with her, picks her up slowly, putting her weight on the arm that isn't injured, that is still strong. It still hurts. He won't be able to carry her for long.

But right now, he has to.

Tony walks out of the cell with steps he forces to be steadier than he feels. He doesn't pass the cells of the others as he leaves with her. Ross had isolated Wanda, and Tony is angry about that, is relieved, too. He doesn't want to see them, not after Siberia and everything that went wrong there.

He almost lets go of her a few times, almost cries out, but he makes it to the jet, makes it home. Then, it's Happy who brings her in, who carries this burden for Tony. She is silent, still, unmoving, and it worries Tony, scares him.

"Wanda," he says after Happy laid her down on her bed. "I'll get the restraints off you now, okay? Please don't go all Glinda on me." He works slowly, the restraints more complicated than they look, traps built in to stop anyone from freeing a prisoner who isn't supposed to be free. He's glad it's him working through them.

He's so glad it isn't Steve.

Wanda takes a shuddering breath after he frees her, a rough sound that hurts him, and Tony reaches out for her, his hand grazing her shoulder before she jerks away from him, frantic. He pulls away.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you back?”

She blinks at him. And he knows she isn't, not quite. She needs time, space, and she sure as hell doesn't need him around her. Tony stands up, moves away from Wanda.

“You have to stay here for a while,” he tells her, hopes that she gets what he is saying. “I'll try to figure something out.” A smile, a shrug. “I always figure something out.”

He looks at Happy still hovering at the door, sees him shrug. Bites his lip before turning back to Wanda. “But for now I'll just see what we got for food around here.”

Days pass them by, weeks. Wanda is a ghost in the house. Tony avoids her, sends Happy her way with food, sends Vision with updates and reports from the UN. Sometimes, the lights in the Compound start to flicker, sometimes he wakes up from nightmares that aren't his. He knows things will have to change, knows he has to face her, talk to her. But he can't, not yet, and he doubts she is ready to listen to him.

Then, Tony gets to bring Rhodey home, too. The Compound seems to come alive again in the wake of his return, seems to turn into a less lonely place. Tony, himself, feels the same.

It's easier with Rhodey around, easier even though Rhodey is broken in a new way. Seeing him like this is painful, is horrible, but there is a sense of purpose in it, a promise Tony can make and keep, because he is Tony Stark, he is a genius, and this he can throw his money and his mind at.

So he builds Rhodey new legs, and he helps Rhodey with therapy, and he mocks and jokes and laughs when Rhodey collapses into a heap on the ground instead of standing tall. And Rhodey looks at him like things might be okay again someday.

“Are you still hiding from her?” he asks Tony a few days after his arrival.

Tony shrugs.

“She's just a kid, Tony,” Rhodey says, smirks.

Tony looks away. “She's a traumatized woman that let crazy Nazi scientists experiment on her because she was pissed at me. And she probably didn't get any therapy after. Because no one around here gets therapy.”

They look at each other.

Tony raises an eyebrow.

Rhodey shrugs. “Point taken.”

“It's a pretty good point,” Tony goes on, and he grins when Rhodey shakes his head. “It’s got bells on it. It's a bestseller during Black Friday. Other companies tried to copy it and failed.”

“Tony?” Rhodey asks.

“Yes, darling?”

“Shut up.”

Tony grins.

Hours later, Rhodey comes to him again. “That girl is a special kind of pissed off,” he says, and something inside of Tony goes tight with fear.

“Did she...”

Rhodey shakes his head. “You activated the power dampeners when you brought her in, remember? She can't hurt me.”

“What did she say?” Tony asks.

“That she's had it with being locked away.”

Tony smiles. “Yeah.”

“How do you think this will play out?” Rhodey asks.

And Tony shrugs because he doesn't know what the UN will want, doesn't know what Germany will want, doesn't know if they'll go after Wanda like she's a terrorist or if they will show more than goodwill just for the sake of the Accords, just to get things running, working, turning the Accords' stumbling beginning into something steady and sure. He doesn't _know_. He forgot how it felt to be so very much out of control. He still hates it.

“One thing at a time?” Rhodey concludes, steady as ever.

“Barring minor catastrophes,” Tony replies.

A few days later Ross calls to tell him that the others have escaped the Raft. It's not much of a surprise, not really; Steve would have always come for them at some point. But it's a complication.

“Wanda is one of his,” Ross says as if Tony wouldn't know this, wouldn't be aware of the tight line that connects Rogers to Maximoff. “It's not safe,” Ross says, and Tony thinks of Siberia and fights down his bitter laughter.

Ross wants Wanda back in prison, a different one this time. The UN agrees. And Tony wonders if they think they're protecting him, if they think they're protecting themselves or if it's just about control. He doesn't quite care for the answer, just knows that they want to take Wanda away.

Tony won't let them.

'P.S.,' Steve had written in his letter, 'Please take care of her.'

It's the only part of his message that hadn't pissed Tony off. The rest of it burned through him like anger, like disappointment, like betrayal, and he can't stand the sight of the paper, of the phone. He can't, and he won't.

He fights the UN for Wanda, he fights Ross, he makes threats, and he makes promises. And he keeps the phone. Just in case. Just for her. 'My responsibility,' he tells himself, and sometimes, in brief breaks during arguments, he imagines what she would have been like if her parents hadn't died, who she would have become. Who he had taken away from the world.

Then, they tell him that Wanda can stay.

They give him a new list of requirements to fulfil, and Tony forces himself to smile at them for her, forces himself to nod for her. Somebody asks him how she is doing. “She's good,” he says, “she's fine,” and he doesn't tell them that he keeps away from her, that he just lets her be. They wouldn't understand.

He goes home, and he tells Happy, Vision and Rhodey about the UN's decision, says, “She gets to stay,” and he sits down next to Rhodey. “You okay with this?” he asks him.

Rhodey nods. “Of course I am. You know that.”

Happy shrugs. “It's all the same to me, boss. She can't hurt me inside the house, anyway.”

It takes Vision longer to answer. He's still, unmoving in this uncomfortable way of his, and Tony asks himself if Vision has even talked to her yet. He should have asked him, should have talked to him about it. “Ms Maximoff needs a safe place to stay,” Vision finally says.

Tony takes it for a yes, and he smiles at his friends before looking for Wanda. He finds her in her room, sitting at the window, staring outside. She looks lonely there, fragile, and he thinks of her gone with the others, imagines her by Rogers' side instead of being trapped in the Compound. He pushes the thought away and knocks at her door.

Her face is blank when she looks at him, lacks the anger he expected. It would be reassuring if it didn't remind him of the Raft, of Wanda lost inside her own head. He tries to smile and isn't sure if he succeeds.

“Hey,” he says.

She doesn't answer. Tony tells himself that he didn't expect her to.

“So the UN and other assorted interested parties talked about you,” he says, and it doesn't even begin to describe the sheer number of people who have opinions about Wanda, who want to decide about her fate.

Wanda looks away from him, looks back out of the window.

Tony coughs. “They're letting you stay here. Gave us a bunch of rules to follow, nothing too bad, I think. I mailed them to you.”

He waits for a moment, just to give her the chance to say something, to ask something. She doesn't. “Okay,” he says, backing out of her room. “Good talk.”

Back in the living room, he sits down on the couch next to Rhodey. “So that was awkward,” he says.

Rhodey snorts. “Did she do her living statue thing?” 

Tony nods.

“Bit on the creepy side,” Rhodey says.

“A bit,” Tony agrees.

Days later, he makes his way to Laura Barton's door. She slaps him. He isn't surprised, smiles at her with his skin still burning from the impact of her hand.

“Hey,” he says.

She lets him in.

“Do you know where he is?” she asks.

He nods.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”

He hands her the phone then, tells her that Rogers left it behind. “I don't want it,” he says to her. Hopes that he won't ever need it. “And your husband went with him.”

She takes the phone and doesn't thank him.

“Call me if you need anything,” he says, even though he doubts she ever would. He needs to make the offer anyway, has to make sure she knows that there is help out there if she should ever need it.

Then, he turns to leave.

"You knew what kind of man Ross is," Laura says, still standing in the door of her home.

Tony smiles to himself, bitter and sharp, and says, "Of course. But he was the only one offering a solution."

"To what?" Laura asks.

"To us," Tony replies.

Laura is silent for a moment, and Tony wonders if she thinks of her husband, wonders if she believes that there is no need for a solution when it comes to Clint. "You're the good guys," she simply says, and Tony wants to say yes, but he can't, not anymore. There are people who lost everything because of them, people who died. Maybe they are good, but they're certainly not good enough.

"That's not enough for over 100 nations," he says.

She smiles, and he thinks she's sad, thinks she's angry, and he understands that feeling all too well. “Shouldn't it be?” she asks.

Tony shrugs. “Ask the dead.”

And he leaves.

He always loved dramatic exits.

Tony thinks of Barton on the flight back, thinks of the children in the house he just left behind. Thinks of history repeating itself, a father choosing Captain America over his family, and he wonders if Barton's children could forgive their father for his choice. He certainly never did. But then, Hydra took the chance for it from him when they sent Barnes after his parents. Barton still has time. For now.

Wanda is in the kitchen when he arrives at the Compound.

Tony stops in the door.

She looks lost, somehow faded, and he wonders if she's lonely, if Rhodey and Vision talking to her are in any way enough. He doubts it.

When she turns to him, he waves. “Heya.”

The glare settling on her face is worryingly familiar.

“You doing okay?” he asks her, thinks he's dumb for even asking. But there's not much he could talk about with her, not much that wouldn't translate into getting hit for a second time today, anyway.

“No,” she replies.

He nods. “We got something in common, then.”

She frowns at him. “It's not like you are trapped in a house with people you don't like.”

“You gotta admit, it's an awesome house,” he says, and he gives her media smile number 3, all impish with a bit of arrogance thrown in. Or a lot of it, depending on who you ask.

He makes himself some coffee then, forces himself to ignore her. He lives at the Compound, too, after all. Hell, he pays for it. And he lives here because of Rhodey and because of her, and he refuses to let her control which rooms he goes to and which he avoids.

When he's finished, he makes her a cup of tea.

He puts the cup next to her, says, “You said people you didn't like. Not people you hate.”

And he leaves before he can see her reaction.

Sometimes he dreams of Rogers, dreams too of Siberia, and the images get tangled up with Afghanistan, with Obie bent over him, the arc reactor in his hand. And Tony wakes up, his body tight with fear and betrayal, and he gets up, walks through the dark Compound, making sure it's still safe, they are all still safe. It calms him, sometimes, the quiet, the closed doors, Friday telling him that everybody is accounted for. Other nights, he ends up in the lab, building brilliant things that nobody needs, dangerous things nobody wants. He keeps some of it, trashes the rest. Goes to bed tired and drags himself through the next day.

He dreams of Sokovia, too, of everything that led up to Ultron. Wanda, in his head, taking him apart, Wanda with Ultron and Wanda with all her anger, her magic made of horror and fury. He doesn't move when these dreams wake him up, holds still and listens to the Compound. Thinks, _She's here_ , and sometimes it feels as if there's a monster in the house, cruel and unforgiving.

"She's just a kid," he tells himself, the night turning shadows in something else, something that traps him, taunts him. She's not a kid, he knows that, she hasn't been for a long time. She has been Hydra not too long ago, she let Hydra change her because of a bomb wearing his name, and maybe there's an echo of his own story before Iron Man in it, maybe they both used to be much more careless with the lives of others before they changed their own.

Maybe they both are much better now.

It's a nice thought.

Rhodey begins to train in the suit again, careful loops through the sky. It scares Tony almost as much as it did seeing Rhodey in that suit controlled by Vanko. Still, he watches him from the ground, his eyes never leaving him; he watches him as he cuts through the sky himself, forever at Rhodey's side, collecting data, analysing Rhodey's trajectory. Sometimes, he thinks of asking Rhodey to quit. Then he hates himself for the idea. Rhodey would never do that, would never quit.

So Tony won't either. He builds Rhodey a better suit, instead; builds in new fall-back systems, better protection, braces he can use with the suit even if it should go offline. He spends hours with it, days, and maybe he gets a bit obsessed, maybe Rhodey has to tell him to stop sometimes.

"Food is not optional," Rhodey tells him. "Same goes for sleep."

Tony nods. "I know. It's just..."

A quick smile, familiar and fond. "Yeah," Rhodey agrees. "I know."

They work on the suit together sometimes, Rhodey's mind quick, his ideas backed by the years he spent in the military. It reminds Tony of Rogers sometimes, but it's an idea that is easily pushed away. Rhodey is nothing like him.

Tony thinks of building gear for Wanda, too, something to focus her powers, something to improve her aim, to give her more control. He doesn't tell anyone about it, doesn't work on it, lets the blueprint grow in his mind, lines interlinking, a framework of possibility.

Wanda is spending more of her time outside of her room these days, a shadow in the kitchen at night, going through the motions of training without her powers in the training levels, playing cards with Vision in the living room, the game fast and almost silent. 

Tony sometimes stops to watch her.

He makes her tea at night, puts it next to her wordlessly. She never thanks him, and he never expects her to. Still, there is something casual to it, a routine, and he never had one with her. It could be progress, it could be nothing, and maybe it will end with her throwing the tea at him one day.

She's different when she trains, sharp movements, more clunky than he expected her to be. Natasha trained her, after all, and she would never allow one of her students to be helpless without their powers. She never let him be. Still, Wanda is clunky, almost careless, hitting out at everything and nothing.

When she breaks one of the training dummies, Tony starts to think that maybe she's just very angry.

And then there's this thing between her and Vision, the silence during their games, the halting conversations he sometimes walks into. And maybe they could have had something months ago, could have made something. But it seems to be gone, this chance, faded into something else.

Tony remembers Rogers, and he knows how it feels.

They get into an argument a few weeks after he gave the phone away, her anger as quick as he expected it to be. It's about the rules that frame her life in the Compound, the rules that he accepted on her behalf. And he had known when he made his promises to Ross and the UN that she wouldn't forgive him for it; he had waited for her to scream at him and rage.

"They are my powers," she shouts, and Tony almost tells her that a bunch of Nazis gave them to her, that maybe it's good they're gone for now. But he doesn't, he smiles at her instead, nods, agrees.

"They are," he says. "But they don't trust you with them right now."

Wanda glares at him. "That's not their decision to make."

Tony shrugs. "Actually, right now it is. They wanted to lock you away, Wanda. They consider you a terrorist. It wasn't easy to get them to let you go."

"Maybe you should have just let them have me," she says, and Tony knows she thinks of the others escaping, knows that she thinks that maybe she could have fought her way out of any prison Ross could have thrown her in. And Tony still doesn't know if he did the right thing when he took Wanda with him, just knows that he couldn't have left her there. Not ever.

“He asked me to look after you,” he tells her. “Rogers.”

When she looks at him, she looks scared, heartbroken. It takes Tony a moment to understand. She just realized Rogers wouldn't be coming for her.

“I'm sorry,” he says. He hadn't meant to hurt her.

Wanda walks away.

They start to avoid each other again, and it's startlingly easy in the Compound.

“This building is big enough for the both of us,” Tony mutters to himself once he passes by her room and she is nowhere to be seen. It's probably better this way, easier for her, less dangerous for him.

Still, he sometimes goes looking for her. Just to see if she's stable, he tells himself, just to see if she's okay. He wouldn't know what missing her would feel like anyway.

“She wants to go outside,” Vision tells him some days after their argument.

Tony understands. Still, “The power dampeners don't reach that far.”

Vision nods. “I will be by her side.”

“Not to insult your manhood, Vision, but that didn't exactly go well for you the last time,” Tony says. “I had to redo the tiles.”

“She has nowhere to go,” Vision reminds him.

Tony looks at him, thinks of Wanda, thinks of being trapped with people you don't care about, all your friends somewhere else. Thinks of caves and missing the sky. And nods. “Okay.”

Days later, he watches them from a window, watches as Wanda and Vision walk through the grounds surrounding the Compound. Wanda looks different outside, looks so much more alive. _Like a real girl,_ he thinks. Her hair is startlingly red against the green of the grass. And Tony can't look away.

Once they let her out, Wanda starts to spend her time in the open, Vision always by her side. It's another cage, Tony thinks, being outside but never alone, a shadow following her like it was her own. He thinks of Afghanistan again, remembers the few times they let him out, guns trained on him, the car battery chaining him down. Him and Wanda keep on collecting parallels, Tony thinks, and it's nothing he would ever have wanted for her.

Ross keeps asking about Wanda, and Tony keeps on being silent about letting her go outside. He wonders what Steve would have to say about that, but pushes the thought away, forces it away with long hours in the lab and even longer hours in his office. More countries are signing the Accords, their influence spreading, and Tony looks at all the unfinished pieces and loopholes in the contracts, sees all the terrifying things that still need changing, and it scares him. He knew this was coming when he signed the Accords, when he brought them to the team, but he had still hoped that they would stand together in this, that the _Avengers_ would show the world that it didn't need to strangle them with the leash they gave to it.

He should have known better.

Sokovia asks for harder punishments for enhanced people using their powers and hurting people by accident, fear speaking through the demand. And Tony understands them, he really does. Wanda is one of theirs, and she joined Ultron, she hurt people when she came after Tony, and she pulled the Avengers closer and closer to herself and her brother, pulled them to Sokovia. And Sokovia, Sokovia will never forgive her or the Avengers for what happened.

Still, the new ideas go too far. He talks to Ross then, talks to the politicians he knows, to the movers and shakers and everyone in between, and he pushes as far as he dares. It changes some things, but Sokovia and its demands still end up on the news, and he still ends up in the grounds with an angry Wanda Maximoff.

Her voice is sharp as she speaks of Sokovia, speaks of their demands, and it takes Tony a while to understand that she blames him for her country's choices. "Sokovia's demands are no surprise, Wanda," he finally says. "You know that they got hit hard." _Because of us,_ he doesn't say. _Because of you._

"They make them because they can," she replies, and it all comes back to the Accords again, to the pieces of paper he signed and she didn't, the rules that keep her there. "Because you helped them," and there's bitterness in her words, sharp and mean. 

And there it is, the conversation not one of them wants to have, and of course it's Sokovia that starts it. "I didn't help them," Tony says, because he hadn't, he doesn't have that kind of power, only has his connections and his money. And it's worth a lot, but it's not enough when it comes to the Accords. He can push at the details, can change them, but he can't change the plot.

"Then what were you doing?" Wanda asks, and he knows she isn't speaking about Sokovia anymore, means the whole grand mess of the UN and the Accords and countries turning on them with anger and fear.

Tony breathes in, holds it in just for a few seconds, forcing some resemblance of calm into his body and voice. “Somebody needed to be there,” he says. “So they would think about us, too. They would never have thought about us. About people like you, about Inhumans. About T'challa or me. And they still would have agreed on the Accords. Just without listening to us.”

Wanda laughs, an ugly sound between them with so much rage in it. "Like you care about people like me."

Tony stares at her, sees Sokovia broken in a war a long time before the Avengers ever stepped foot in it. And he _sees_ her, and he thinks of a bomb sitting in a home like a monster under the bed. “I wouldn't have let them hurt you," he tells her, and he never realized that he meant this ever since she killed Ultron. “I owe it to your parents.”

It's a shock, that sudden admission of all the things they never talked about, the bomb and the people they lost. And maybe he shouldn't have said it, or maybe not in that moment, because they aren't there yet and he doesn't know if they will ever reach that point.

"Wanda," he says, careful, worried.

She stares at him, and she looks terrifyingly angry, with magic crackling around her in red waves. And Tony knows he should have talked with her about this in the house where it's almost safe, knows he should have talked with her about it sooner, that it's too late, that it's not enough, that it never could be.

“Don't talk about my parents,” she says, and her words are a hiss of pain, are three men in a bunker and one of them saying, _He killed my mom._

“I'm sorry,” he says, even though maybe he shouldn't, and there's magic like fire all around him, there's Wanda, and he thinks, for a stunning moment, that she's painfully, heartbreakingly beautiful.

He thinks maybe she is going to kill him.

The UN would destroy her for it.

“Wanda,” he says against the rising storm of reds and power, “Wanda,” and he hears voices behind him, calling his name. And it scares him, Wanda and the voices, because it's Rhodey, of course it's Rhodey, who else would run into the fire for Tony other than him? And he doesn't want Rhodey to get hurt again, can't bear the thought of it. So Tony reaches out, and he takes Wanda's hand in his.

“Stop,” Tony says, and there is only Wanda, only Wanda and him, and he steps right into her fury and her grief. “I can't let you hurt him.”

And she is looking at him, and she is crying, and it hurts when he pulls her into his arms, hurts because there is her magic, and there is what he did to her. It feels like it lasts forever.

Then, there's nothing.

Tony wakes up in his bed, cool sheets covering him, the window open, a soft wind dancing with the curtains. He comes to, and his body aches in new ways, raw nerves and emptiness. He closes his eyes against the feeling, bends his body around it, wrapping himself up in his own arms. It doesn't help. Not for minutes, not for hours, time lost to the pain.

He remembers Wanda.

And Rhodey.

Tony gets up slowly, carefully. The world tilts for a moment, shakes, before it settles again. He takes a few steps through his apartment, daring it to go haywire again. The Compound stretches out quietly in front of his door.

"Friday," he asks, and he's afraid of the answer to the question he has to ask, balls his fists and forces himself to speak. "Is Rhodey okay?"

"Yes," she says right away. "Ms. Maximoff didn't attack him."

Tony stands still then, breathes slowly, lets relief run through him like an electrical current, painful and pulling him under, and it's almost impossible not to get lost in it, not to fall to his knees and weep. Rhodey is okay.

Everything will be fine now.

He walks into the quiet in front of him, a hand trailing the wall to his left, a promise of stability he has trouble believing in. He thinks of checking on Rhodey, thinks about looking for Vision and asking him about what had happened. Thinks of working, Sokovia still fresh in his mind.

Ahead of him, Wanda is sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. Tony stops, blinks and almost turns back. She sees him before he can do so.

"Hanging out in the hallway? Don't you need your teacher's permission for this?" he asks, and he pretends that his voice isn't shaking.

She shrugs. Remains silent.

He walks a bit closer, leans against the wall and watches her, wonders if she couldn't sleep because of her attack, because of him or Rhodey or Sokovia. Says, "I'm pretty sure it's past little witches’ bed time."

She looks up then, her eyes narrowing. "Isn't it past old engineer's bed time, too?"

Tony snorts at her reply. "Got knocked out during the day," he says plainly. "Can't sleep now."

Wanda gets up then, and she's suddenly so much closer than just moments before, she feels so much realer, too, as if the moments before were just parts of a dream Tony was having.

Tony holds still. So does she.

Time passes, seconds and minutes, and Tony looks at the hallway behind Wanda, the wall. Looks at the shadows on Wanda's face. Waits.

Then, finally, Wanda reaches out, and he almost jerks away. But he doesn't, breathes in shakingly as she touches him, her fingers skimming over his face for the briefest of moments before she touches his hand. And he remembers that her touch felt like he was burning just hours before, painful. It felt like losing himself. But now, her hand is soft in his, warm, and nothing like fire.

“I wouldn't have hurt Rhodey,” she tells him in the stillness of the dark hallway.

He leaves her there.

His apartment at the Compound greets him with quietness and darkness, and he falls into his bed, dreams of Wanda's hand against his skin, dreams of fire and pain and the relief that follows after, dreams of her and himself in a dark room, and he dreams and dreams and dreams.

"The light show was spectacular," Rhodey tells him in the morning, pushing a cup of coffee in his direction.

“Yeah?” Tony asks.

“Yeah,” Rhodey says. “All red and glowy.”

They look at each other. Rhodey grins.

Tony shakes his head. “That was scary,” he tells him.

Rhodey shrugs, nods. “Yeah. She's pretty good at that.”

And they don't talk about Tony being good at being scary as well.

Wanda is different in the days after her attack on Tony, stops when she sees Tony and turns to walk away whenever their paths cross, and Tony wonders if she's afraid of him or if she's afraid of herself.

He lets her be.

For a few days, it feels like a stalemate, feels like their personal version of peace. Then, Wanda finds him again. "Tell me about Afghanistan," she demands.

The thing inside of him, that hurt and angry thing that still hasn't dealt with the desert and the bullets and the caves, that still wakes up with a hole in his chest and a scream in his mouth roars up in anger, and Tony wants to hurt her for mentioning his past like she has any right to it. Nobody has. Not even Tony himself.

Still, “Tell me about Afghanistan,” she says, and Tony opens his mouth, and he tells her about almost dying, tells her about the stink of it, tells her about working by the light of a fire instead of the artificial blue that fills his homes, tells her about the terror and fear of it. Tells her about Yinsen. 

And he doesn't know why he gives her these pieces of his past, doesn't understand himself. But he doesn't stop.

“He told me not to waste my life,” Tony says.

Wanda asks, “Do you?” and Tony almost laughs, shrugs.

“No,” he tells her instead. “I think I don't.”

"Do you think you would have changed if they hadn't kidnapped you?" she asks him, and there is a sharpness in her question he can't quite define, an accusation.

Tony thinks back, sees the man he used to be, the person he wants to be not even an idea back then, too careless to care about what he did, too lost to look for a new destination. He shakes his head. "Probably not."

Her smile is triumphant, sad, and this, too, he can't decipher. All he can do is throw it all back at her, an echo of who they were. "Would you have left Hydra without the whole mess with Ultron? If they had given you a chance to get to me in some way?"

Wanda's smile falls away.

"Thought so," he says. Then, Tony smiles. "But I got kidnapped and somehow that ended with me being a hero. And you switched sides. That's worth something, Wanda. Don't make it less because you're angry at me."

He turns away from her, turns to the window. Looks at the world outside of the Compound, that crazy place they both chose over their past, the one he can still defend while she is locked away, unable to help anyone or change anything. For a moment, he wants to tell her that things will get better for her again, that this is not what her life is going to be. But he keeps quiet, expects her to leave.

Instead, she stays, and he thinks she is watching him.

It's not a bad feeling. It's not even unfamiliar.

They danced together once when she was still an Avenger and he was still retired. A charity event not one of them could avoid with the rich and the powerful, and this one guy who wouldn't stop talking to Wanda, following her around. She had been angry, Tony still remembers that, on edge.

He had been angry, too.

“Wanda,” he had said, had stopped next to her, standing between her and the man. “Care for a dance?”

Raised eyebrows, a slight frown. “With you?”

Tony had taken a bow then, had offered Wanda his hand. And she had taken it.

They had left the man behind, Wanda a new presence at his side. Their moves on the dance floor had been clunky at the beginning, his hand on her waist too careful, her trying to keep a distance between them that had seemed wrong for dancing.

But they had danced.

“Another?” he had asked her after the song was over.

Wanda had nodded, had stepped closer to him, and there had been a challenge in her eyes. “Sure.”

He had twirled her once, pulled her back into his arms, a move he has done a million times, it felt. It had made her smile, had made her laugh for the briefest of moments. And Tony remembers that it had felt as if he had won something, remembers that later, when he had danced with Natasha, Wanda's eyes had been on him. Now, he wonders what she saw back then. What she is seeing now.

“So this is enough?” Wanda asks him, pulling him back into the present, into the Compound. “This place and your suits and your rules?”

Tony shrugs. “It's a work in progress.”

He goes on a mission a few days later. Vision is with him but Rhodey remains at the Compound. He's not ready yet, still too unpractised with his new gear, the new suit, and he's level-headed enough to accept that. Tony doubts that he could ever be this gracious, this smart. But then, this has never been a job for Tony, never been his duty.

Neither was flying into danger all weapons drawn, but that was his choice, is his choice still, and he still loves it, still gets lost in it, mind and suit a weapon. But now, there are military helicopters circling the air, landing on the streets, there are soldiers and paramedics, and Friday is updating him on the military and the police, their channels freely open to his AI after they asked for Iron Man's help. It's a new world, a new fight, and half the time Tony isn't sure if it's a brave one, and most of the time he almost expects Roger's voice on the comms, the flash of Natasha's hair or the noise of Clint's arrows.

There's a review after, there's a review because a civilian died and Iron Man didn't save him. And it hurts, watching the footage Oversight collected, seeing himself being too late, too weak, not good enough. But then, it always hurts. And it is what he wanted, it's somebody watching over the dead, demanding more than just respect and the Stark Foundation's money.

"There was nothing you could have done," they say this time.

Tony watches the body hitting the ground. Thinks, _There is always something._ and drags himself to the therapist they sent him too, a familiar face by now.

"So that guy fell to his death," she begins, and sometimes he hates the way she talks about the missions, hates her because she can be harsh with the people he didn't save, careless, too. Still, he nods, and she asks about the mission, about its details, and he repeats the lines he already delivered in front of the Accords Oversight.

"Do you think Steve Rogers would have saved that man?" she asks him, and he should have seen that question coming.

Tony shrugs. "Maybe."

She smiles, leans back in her chair. "Because he's better than you?"

He doesn't answer because Rogers isn't and Rogers is, and some days he just doesn't know how to deal with all the absences in his lives, with all the 'ifs' and 'could haves'.

She looks at him, and Tony knows that she wants to bench him, wants him out of the air for a while. But she can't, because it's just Vision and him now, and they can't ground him. Even if they should.

"Listen," she begins, and he thinks she is sorry for him, hates that she is.

"It's gonna get better?" he interrupts her, and grins when she raises her eyebrows.

"It's going to be amazing," she says. "Rainbows and unicorns."

"I distrust unicorns," Tony says. “Their obsession with virgins is creepy.”

She smiles, and she lets him go.

The Compound is dark when he arrives, the lights above him coming to life slowly as he walks through the hallways, Friday keeping them dim, almost comfortable. He stops in one of the living rooms, the one all of them always seem to be drawn to. Maybe because it's the one that bears no signs of the Avengers that came before them, maybe because it has the largest windows and the nicest view. Maybe because they like to imagine that, one day, they could be a team.

Tony sits down in one of the window alcoves, the glass cool beneath his fingertips when he reaches out to touch it, drawing the shapes of the buildings and trees he can see. Thinks about that man falling, thinks about Yinsen, about Pietro, too. Outside, the night grows lighter. Behind him, he hears footsteps. He doesn't turn to them.

"I heard about the civilian," Wanda says.

He keeps silent, keeps his eyes on the world outside.

Wanda stops next to him, close enough for her image to be mirrored in the window. "I'm sorry."

He nods. "Me, too."

She puts a cup of hot chocolate next to him, and he remembers making her tea. He thinks of letting Friday check for poison and he pushes the thought away, takes the cup instead. "Thank you."

Wanda nods, and Tony thinks she's trying to smile. “My mother made me soup when things got bad,” she tells him, her voice distant, and Tony remembers his mom, the food she brought him after his arguments with his father had turned into screaming matches.

“I don't know how to make it,” Wanda says. Tony looks at her. “The soup, I mean.”

"I'm sorry," Tony replies, and thinks her mother might have taught her if his bombs hadn't killed her.

"Yeah," she replies, and she is turning away from him now. "I know."

He watches her go, the lights accompanying her, until he can't see her anymore. Then, he turns back to the window and waits for the dawn.

Days later, Ross calls him because the UN is talking about regulations and trials again, talking about finally putting Wanda in front of a court. It worries Tony.

“If she wants to be an Avenger, she has to deal with it,” Rhodey says when they discuss it.

Tony shrugs. “I'm not sure she wants to be an Avenger. Not without Rogers, at least.”

“Have you asked her about that?” Rhodey asks him, a sad smile on his face. “Or are you making assumptions?”

Tony looks at him then, looks at him and thinks of Wanda, thinks of Ross coming to him with the Accords, and he should have done better back then, should have been smarter. But he hadn't been.

“Assumptions,” he finally admits.

Rhodey cocks his head, smirks.

Tony shrugs.

Then, he drags Rhodey to his lab to show him the updates on his suit, new stabilizers and dampeners to improve its landing capabilities, new warning systems for hits below his waist. He goes through the details with him, Rhodey asking for his reasoning, offering a new perspective, and Tony gets lost in the moment. Later, with the darkness and the quietness of his bedroom making things easier, he thinks that he almost doesn't miss Bruce and his science when he talks with Rhodey like this.

Wanda is in the kitchen when he walks into it the next morning, still wearing her pyjamas, her hair a mess. It's a new scene, something strangely intimate, and it reminds Tony of mornings with Pepper, reminds him of another life in which Rhodey could still walk and Rogers was his friend and Pepper and Tony were in love.

It feels like decades have passed since then.

"I'm sorry about attacking you," Wanda tells him while eating cornflakes, and it pulls Tony out of his memories.

Instead, he thinks of burning beneath her touch, thinks of being scared. Shrugs. "Happens to the best of us."

He almost misses the quick smile that races across her face, smirks at her because he has seen it.

"Thanks for not reporting it," Wanda goes on.

Tony nods. "Don't make it a habit," he tells her, even though it already is, Sokovia and Germany and the Compound.

She nods, and he steals the cornflakes carton sitting in front of her bowl, puts it against his ear and shakes it.

"Damn," he says. "I'm pretty sure Vision already got the toy."

She looks at him, her face unmoving, before she gets up to put away her things. Tony is pretty sure she mutters something about "living with idiots" as she leaves the kitchen. It makes him smile again.

"Huh," Rhodey says behind him. "You look happy for this time of the day."

Tony shrugs. "I had coffee already."

Rhodey’s nod is slow and familiar, and Tony thinks of MIT and messing up and pretending that he didn't, and Rhodey simply nodding when he tried to explain his latest flash of genius gone wrong.

"Asshole," he says.

Rhodey grins, walks past him with steps so much heavier than they used to be, the machinery Tony built for him still unfamiliar for both of them. Tony watches as Rhodey makes himself breakfast, fights down the urge to help him with it.

“Have you talked with her?” Rhodey asks him once he has his own cup of coffee, a fried egg sizzling in a pan on the stove. “About the hearing?”

Tony shakes his head, puts a smirk on his face. “I was hoping you would do that.”

Rhodey takes a sip of his coffee, leans back in his chair and looks at Tony wordlessly. Tony gives him his most winning smile.

“I don't think so,” Rhodey says.

“Yeah,” Tony replies, drawing the word out. “I kinda expected that. Words of advice?”

Rhodey grins at him, raising his cup as if he was toasting him. “Be ready to duck?”

Tony exhales loudly, mutters, "I hate you," and clinks his coffee cup against Rhodey's.

After some more cups of coffee, two disgusting health drinks and some tinkering in the lap, he goes to Wanda, a cup of tea in his hand. "Hey," he says, offering up the cup. "You got a minute?" When she nods, he hands her the tea before walking to the window, looking out briefly. He never noticed that her view is of the road leading away from the Compound, never noticed and now wonders if it was her choice, if she regrets it these days. If it was cruel. And he thinks of the UN and the Accords Council, of all the things coming her way, and thinks that it is. Shakes off the thought before turning to her, a speech about the UN and responsibility in his mind and mouth.

But she is looking at him, and for a moment she looks so open, and his carefully planned words fall away. “I don't expect you to ever forgive me for your parents,” he tells her instead, and he smiles at her. “I wouldn't.” Her face closes off, and he wishes he hadn't said anything, knows he had to. Knows that this has been coming for far too long now.

Tony sits down next to her, close enough to feel the heat of her body, and maybe that is another thing he shouldn't do, maybe it's wrong, but he has always been pretty good at doing wrong things in the most spectacular way.

“To be honest, I'm not sure I will ever forgive you for what you did to Bruce. You took away his control, and he hurt people, and he will never be okay with that,” he says, and he doesn't add, _If he'll ever come back, if he is even still alive_ , he swallows the words and the worry.

At his side, Wanda takes a stuttering breath.

“So I will never be okay with that,” Tony goes on. He knows that he’s hurting her but he needs to tell her, needs to tell somebody, because Bruce is _gone_.

“Ultron,” Wanda says, and there is regret there, a familiar kind of self-hatred and anger. 

Tony wonders how long it has been there, how they had all missed it.

“Was always in my head,” Tony tells her, because he was, this grand plan to protect the world, to protect the people he loves.

“But not like this,” she says, and Tony thinks of another Ultron, of an Ultron created without her influence and without Loki's sceptre, an Ultron created with more patience and without this sharper idea of death and loss she put in Tony's head.

“Not like this,” he agrees. Ultron wasn't the first AI Tony built after all, there was JARVIS, there is Friday, and neither of them ever went crazy like that. “But there are more things going wrong there than just you fucking with my mind. Loki's sceptre, too.” She looks at him then, raw and hurt, and Tony almost reaches out for her. 

“I'm sorry,” Wanda says.

Tony smiles. “I know.” And he doesn't tell her that she shouldn't be or that it will be okay. Instead, he pulls out the papers Ross had sent him, several pages filled with legalese and different nations' demands about Wanda. “There will be a hearing,” he tells her. “About you working with Rogers when things went … crazy.”

Wanda nods. “They want me gone.”

“Probably. Do you want to be?” he asks her.

“I... I can't go back to that place. I...” She stops, looks away, and he thinks about reaching out again, thinks of pulling her in.

“You won't. I promise.”

She shakes her head, bites her lips, and he knows, suddenly, that she is scared. “You can't make that promise,” she says.

She's right. He can't. He shouldn't. So he nods, and he thinks of all the lawyers she will need, thinks of getting a PR team that will sway the world in her favour, thinks of suiting up as Tony Stark and doing battle for her once more.

“What do you want to do?” he asks. Tony watches Wanda, sees the fear on her face, the guilt, and he sees it settle into something different, something new.

“I want to make things right,” she tells him, and he thinks of his first flight in the suit, thinks of tearing into his past to build something good out of everything he had done, everything he had messed up. And he knows, he _knows_ that Wanda had made this decision once before, back in Sokovia and after. But holding steady, trying and failing and making the very same decision again and again even when nothing you do seems to be good enough – that has always been the hard part.

“Okay,” he says, and he finally takes her hand. It's warm in his. “Okay.” They sit like this for a moment, just a little while, and he almost expects her to pull her hand out of his. But she doesn't. Then he leaves to call in reinforcements, to draw up a battle plan. There's a war ahead and he intends to win it.

They come for her a few days later. Men in suits, men with papers. They are met with an army of Tony's own. Wanda stands still amongst it all, unmoving as the chatter around her grows louder and louder. Tony is oddly proud of her.

"She stays here," one of his lawyers says, and her face is fierce, her body a solid wall between Wanda and the men the Council sent. "She has been here all this time, she has proven that she won't run."

"Where would she go anyway?" another lawyer adds, sounding amused, arrogant. "Do you expect her to flee on a broom? Perhaps cackling all the way and kidnapping some children for lunch later?"

Tony grins, watches as they argue, and when his phone rings he knows that it's Ross on the line.

"You're taking a risk," Ross says, and Tony can hear the challenge in his voice, the threat.

"I always do," Tony answers.

And that's that.

There's a rhythm to their days after the confrontation, a new rhythm made of the lawyers arriving in the morning, Tony's PR team on their heels, meetings interrupted by food followed by more meetings, the ensemble changing but the theme painfully similar. Her defence, her life after.

“We have to give them something,” they say.

“She is ready to give the world her life,” Tony replies.

Shrugs and smiles and “They will want more”, and Tony isn't sure that he made the right decision, thinks of finding a way to get Wanda away from it all, to find Rogers and send her his way. When he tells Wanda, she smiles and shakes her head.

“I'm not running away,” she says.

“Okay,” he answers.

Tony is pretty sure that Wanda hates every moment of it. But she bears it, and sometimes she smiles through it. Other days, she goes into the garden and sets things on fire. It's a spectacular sight, though Tony knows better than to join in moments like that.

Instead, he watches her from the Compound.

Rhodey joins him, sometimes. “Still with the light show,” he says.

Tony snorts. “Yeah. Still spectacular.”

"She doesn't hate you anymore, Tony," Rhodey says. "You know that, right?"

Tony nods.

"Good," Rhodey says, mostly to himself it seems, and he pats Tony's shoulder before he leaves.

“I'm not scared of her anymore,” Tony tells the empty room. But he hasn't been for a while now and Rhodey knew anyway.

He dreams of Wanda, dreams of her outside, wrapped in his arms, with her magic curling all around them. He dreams of her, and it doesn't hurt.

“Don't,” Tony tells himself in the morning. “Just don't.” And he tells himself that she's too young, tells himself that there's too much past between them and not much of a future. But he can't stop his dreams, isn't sure he even wants to.

He keeps on watching her.

Sometimes, he catches her watching him.

Sometimes, she smiles at him.

He thinks that means something.

There are hearings in front of the Accords Councils, one after the other, and it's tiring, exhausting. Boring, too, the questions repeating themselves, only the faces behind them changing, and Tony wishes for a short-cut, for an easy solution. But there isn't, there is only bearing it, and if Wanda does, so does he.

Christine Everhart asks for an interview.

His PR team tells him to agree to it, tells them that she is a chance.

“She doesn't like me,” Tony tells them.

One of them shrugs. “She is good at what she does and people listen to her when she talks about you.”

Tony snorts. “Probably because she's doing it all the time.”

But he agrees to it, Wanda agrees to it, and a day later Christine walks into the Compound, all polished beauty and fierce curiosity. And Tony thinks of her above him, her mouth hot on his, thinks of her armed with a mic and sharp questions, and he focuses his smile on her, media-trained and bullet-proof.

"Ms. Everhart," he greets her.

"Mr. Stark," she replies, a curl to her lips and voice.

He almost regrets letting her in.

Christine turns to Wanda then. "And you're the cause of his most recent trouble." Wanda frowns, and Christine's smile turns kinder. "He always finds one."

"Trouble," Tony says, "just likes me very much. It's a flirt, and you know how the story goes with those."

They settle down, Christine facing the two of them, a recorder on the table between them, the strangest of camp-fire scenes. 

Christine smiles. "Ms. Maximoff, how do you like living in the USA? It must be very different compared to Sokovia." 

It's the kind of soft question she throws out before things get serious, the change-up before the fast balls start coming. Tony doesn't even realize that he moved closer to Wanda until Christine raises an eyebrow at him and grins.

"It is," Wanda says. "I haven't seen as much as I want to, though."

"Because you are a prisoner?" Christine asks her, her face soft, a pretence of empathy.

Wanda shakes her head, says, "I didn't have the time when I was an Avenger."

"Ah," Christine answers. "The Avengers. How did it feel to join them after you fought against them? There were rumours of you using mind control on them." And there it is, Christine's sharpness, still reined in, a hand on the knife, the blade still in its sheath.

Tony feels Wanda tense at his side. "Difficult. I just lost my brother."

"The people of Johannesburg lost a lot, too," Christine says, still smiling.

"And the people of Sokovia," Wanda goes on.

Christine nods. "Your home country. Very poor, poorer now. There were protests against you becoming a member of the Avengers there."

"There were protests against the Avengers, too," Tony cuts in, and he almost feels like distracting a bull, throwing himself in its path and waving a red flag.

"Mostly protests against you, I gather. It was your creation that caused the carnage."

"Yes," Tony says.

Christine looks at him, waits. Tony remains silent. Then, "No justification, Mr. Stark?"

He shakes his head.

Christine smiles again, softer this time, and for a moment Tony wonders if she means it, if she understands this. Maybe she does. Christine never cared for his weapon production, after all.

She turns back to Wanda. "Ultron was not the first time one of Mr. Stark's creations did some damage to Sokovia. His weapons were used on your home, too. Did that have any influence on you once you joined the Avengers?"

Wanda shakes her head. "He was retired back then. He mostly spoke with the others when he was around."

"So you weren't bothered by his presence at all? You chose to fight alongside Rogers when the Sokovia Accords were drawn up." A sliver of disbelief, a slight smirk, and Tony knows that Christine is pushing them, is pushing Wanda. Is playing her, and Tony doesn't know how to warn Wanda.

"That wasn't about Tony," Wanda says.

Tony swallows a curse, glares at Christine, who simply shrugs and mouths _Tony_ at him, a slight smile on her face, before turning back to Wanda.

"Was it about the Accords then? Did you disagree with them?" she asks, and Tony hates her a little bit.

"I did," Wanda says.

"And now?" Christine asks, and the knife is out, the question sharp enough to draw Wanda's blood.

"They were created out of fear and distrust. But I do think the UN has a point. I agree that there needs to be someone who cares about what people like us do when we fight, who sees our mistakes and does something about them. But I'm not sure the Accords are the right way to deal with all of that, with the politics and the hatred and the discrimination." Wanda smiles then, her eyes steady on Christine. "Are you?"

Christine blinks, and she is the first to look away.

"Done?" Tony asks.

Christine snorts, and she sounds amused, maybe even tiny bit impressed. "Done. I can do something with this."

"I'm pretty sure you can do something with anything, Ms. Everett," Tony tells her.

A quick smile, a nod, and Christine is getting up to leave. "The world is a pretty bad place sometimes, Ms. Maximoff. It would be nice to know that you belong to the good guys. There aren't many of them around right now."

When Christine is gone, Tony looks at Wanda. “You did good,” he tells her.

Wanda says, “I guess,” and she sounds so much more tired than she did during the interview, and Tony knows make-believe, knows how to play the game and what it does to you. Wanda is still getting used to it.

She looks paler these days, weary, and it hurts to see her like this, hurts to know that he doesn't look any better. Tony makes her a coffee the way he likes it, stronger than it probably should be, bitter and dark. When he gives her the cup, their fingers touch.

He likes the warmth beneath his skin.

“You okay?” he asks her.

Wanda raises an eyebrow at him.

“You're not okay,” he concludes.

“No,” she agrees.

Tony looks at her, and he thinks of a life spent between walls, thinks of the people distrusting Wanda, hating Wanda. Knows she has seen all the reports on her, has seen the commentary and the hateful quotes people give away so freely when somebody puts a camera on them on the streets. Looks out of the window and sees a world that is sunny, that is filled with greens and reds and blues.

“So, picnic?” he asks.

Wanda stares at him. Tony shrugs.

Minutes later, they're outside, the sun beating down on them, a blanket spread out beneath them, random food out of the fridge spread out all around them. For the briefest of moments, it all reminds Tony of being with Pepper.

Then, Wanda smiles at him.

For a moment, she looks happy.

Then she says, "I didn't want to feel sorry for you," and the mood changes, turns sharper. "About Afghanistan. I didn't want to give you that."

Tony looks at her, sees the way she looks at him, the slight twist to her mouth, and he remembers telling her about the kidnapping, remembers her bitterness, and he thinks that she feels sorry for him now. He isn't sure he wants her to.

"Wanda," he begins.

She shakes her head, reaches out for him. Doesn't touch him.

"Don't," she says. "Empathy isn't pity."

Tony laughs. "You sound like Rogers."

She smiles at him, and it's a little bit sad. "Yeah, well..."

He doesn't ask. Instead, he looks at the blue sky above them, looks at the sunshine spreading over the grass, making the green seem brighter, a technicolour field under a technicolor sky. He looks at Wanda again, and he thinks that she is more beautiful than the scene surrounding them.

"Do you miss them at all?" Wanda asks him, brings him back to their conversation.

Tony doesn't answer for a long while, thinks of Natasha and her lies and her faith and her hopes, thinks of her hand solid on his shoulder and her fond smiles. Thinks of Clint and his dumb jokes, his quiet presence in the lab when Tony tinkered with the arrows and let him him test them right there. Thinks of Rogers. Says, "I miss Bruce."

Wanda snorts. Then she says, "I wonder what they would do right now."

Tony thinks of Rogers's reaction to the Accords, thinks of the nations that signed the Accords, that asked the Avengers not to march across their borders without being asked. “I love him but Cap wouldn't know what a compromise was if it punched him in the face. And compromise is what we need to do right now.”

“Tony Stark talking about compromise...”

He shrugs. “I learned it. I had to.”

"So world peace isn't privatised anymore?" she asks, and there's some kind of amusement in her words, fondness even.

"It never was," he answers. "That was just me being an asshole."

And Wanda is laughing, and he likes the way it sounds, likes the way it changes her face, and he hardly thinks about only hearing her laugh once before, hardly thinks about the dance and her body in his arms. He only grins while he listens to it now.

Later, much later, with the sunset come and gone, the two of them return to the Compound. He walks Wanda to her apartment, the two of them side by side, and it's comfortable, it's easy.

“Thank you,” she says, leaning against the wall next to her door. “I needed that.”

He nods. “We both did, I guess.”

Again, she smiles, and Tony thinks of leaning in, thinks of kissing her, and he almost does. But in the end, he doesn't, simply wishes her a good night instead. In the darkness of his room, he imagines what it would have felt like, wonders if she would have kissed him back.

He thinks she would have.

His PR team is working on her story, uses Wanda's losses and her grief, her parents pulled into the limelight. She hates it, Tony knows, hates how her parents are turned into an excuse, their deaths grim fairytales that look so very good in the kind of trashy magazines people love. It feels painfully familiar, a car crash on a too familiar road, and Tony wishes he could make it better for her. But her parents are the easiest story to tell, so much easier than her brother dying in a hail of bullets. Pietro was a villain from the beginning. All her parents ever did was die.

Tony doesn't have many pictures of his family when his parents were still alive, fewer of when the family was still whole, Tony too small to make trouble, Maria reading him stories every night, Howard keeping a sleeping Tony in his office sometimes. He only remembers those years in flashes, nothing he could hold on to, and when he looks at the photos, he hardly recognizes the people in them, his parents younger than he ever knew them, himself a laughing child.

He hardly ever looks at the pictures.

Wanda has none left, he thinks, nothing that would remind her of her parents' smiles. And Tony knows how those memories fade away too quickly, knows how it feels when the people you love turn to water, impossible to hold on to. So he asks her if she wants to go to Sokovia once the trial is over, if she wants to see the place that used to be her home.

She shakes her head, bends her lips to fake a smile, and says, "There is nothing there for me anymore."

"Okay," Tony says.

She touches his hand then, two fingers against his skin. "Thank you."

He shrugs. "Sure."

Wanda smiles, a quick flare of fondness, going on her tiptoes and pressing a soft kiss to Tony's cheek. "Thank you for trying," she tells him. "It's worth more than you know."

Tony stares after her as she walks away. Thinks, _But I do,_ ; wonders if he could ever try hard enough.

A new day, cloudy and unwilling, and Wanda is waiting for him at the Compound's main entrance.

“You ready?” he asks her.

She shakes her head.

Tony nods. “Me, neither.”

He stands with her as the Accords Council makes its decision public, the day the UN tries to tell the world whether to hate Wanda or not, and he stands close enough to know that she is shaking, that she is scared. But when she speaks, her voice is steady, and when she replies to questions, she is calm.

“Sokovia has doubts about your rehabilitation,” one of the Council members says.

Tony looks at Wanda, sees the twitch of her fingers, knows that without the dampeners around her wrists there would be magic flickering across her palms, her fingers, a gesture to calm herself.

Wanda looks at the Council members and nods. “I want to show them who I can be.”

And Tony worries, just then, that the Council will hear her words and hear a threat in them instead of the promise they are, that they see her and don't understand her, and he isn't sure what he would do then, isn't sure that he wouldn't break the laws he defended against Rogers and everybody else. It scares him.

The hearing goes on. There are more questions, pointed, sharp, there are accusations, too, doubts. They're testing her, Tony realizes, trying to provoke her. And she isn't falling for it, holds steady. It makes him proud.

Then, it's over.

They give her rules, restrictions. They give her the Accords to sign. They let her go.

It almost feels too easy. But it isn't, it wasn't, and Wanda is shaking again when they walk out of the building and into the chaos of journalists, camera flashes and microphones. It's suffocating.

Tony thinks of flying them away. And doesn't. It wouldn't be a good start to Wanda's new life. Instead, he distracts the journalists with his smirks and his comments, plays an old and familiar tune, the pied piper they all love so much. He sells well, after all.

It takes them a while to escape, and the morning has turned into afternoon by the time they finally arrive at the grounds surrounding the Compound. Wanda smiles when she sees the building rising up ahead of them, looks over to Tony and says, “Home, sweet home.”

They walk into the garden, side by side, and Tony thinks the sun should be shining and the sky should give them the brightest blue it has to offer. It's a new beginning, after all, hopeful, and it deserves better than the clouds stretching over them and the wind chilling their faces and hands.

Wanda doesn't seem to mind any of it.

And Tony, Tony made his first steps as Iron Man in the desert, heat and sand, yellows and blues, and it had been terrifying and horrible and lonely until Rhodey found him. So maybe this was good, maybe this was better, this weather and having someone by her side. He doesn't dare to ask.

But he dares to hope.

Rhodey waves at them through the window with a bottle of champagne, Vision at his side with the serene copy of a human smile.

"Congrats," Rhodey mouths at them. 

Tony gives him the thumbs-up. 

“You want to go inside?” Wanda asks. “Apparently, there's champagne.”

Tony shrugs. “Not yet.”

“Yeah,” Wanda agrees. “Not yet.”

She looks at him then, and there is something new on her face, expectation, maybe, or a dare to herself.

“What?” he asks, and follows Wanda when she walks out of sight of the others. “Is this the moment when you kill me in a dramatic way?”

The kiss is a surprise, Wanda's mouth against him warm and soft, her hands shaking in the collar of his shirt, pulling him down to her. It is good, too, and Tony leans into it, pulls her closer. She feels amazing in his arms, feels like some kind of answer, and maybe he doesn't want this kiss to end.

Still, he says, “Not a good idea,” when they break apart, because it isn't. It's dangerous, the two of them together, there's too much hurt between them. But her forehead is touching his, her lips are still so close, and he wants to kiss her again.

“Of course it isn't,” she answers, stepping away.

His hands reach out for nothing, and he forces them back to his sides. It feels so much colder without her right there with him, it feels empty. It's not what he wanted, not what he wants.

They start walking again, closer this time, hands bumping into each other, pinpoints of warmth and skin and possibility, and Tony thinks of nothing for a while, just lets himself be. It's been a while since he got to do that.

Somewhere, time and distance away, the world goes on. And it's the Accords, it's Ross, it's the UN. It's Rogers, too, and Barnes, this ache in his heart, this sharp thing he isn't ready to touch yet.

Here, it feels as if it's just them.

But the world waits for no one, and Tony is still himself. So he says, "I'm sorry Clint isn't around," and he doesn't mention Steve.

"I know," she says. "I wish he were." Then she smiles. "I got Vision, though. And Rhodey." A shrug, playful and easy. "You are kinda bearable, too."

It surprises a laugh out of him. “Legolas has nothing on me,” he tells her.

Wanda's smile grows then, and it seems fond, feels honest. When she takes his hand, hers is sure and strong. "Let’s go inside," she says. "I was promised champagne"

And he says, "Yes," and he means _Let’s do this_ and he thinks that he likes her. Thinks that he could love her, too, could try to do this again, could give parts of himself away like that. With her. And it's crazy, it's dumb, and it's sure as hell not what Steve meant when he told him to look after her. Tony doesn't care.

They cross the garden to the Compound, bodies in parallel, and when they walk inside, Wanda doesn't let go of his hand.


End file.
